Yukon Quest 2014 – Day 9

Allen won the Carmacks to Braeburn sprint race with Brent and is resting 8 hours in Braeburn before heading to the finish line.

Hank DeBruin is the last team in Dawson, but he will be slow getting started this morning with real winter temperatures in the minus thirties this morning.

Update: Brent Sass is out of the race. He has been withdrawn and is on his way to hospital in Whitehorse. He was injured in an accident about 12 miles from the Braeburn checkpoint. Brent’s condition is described as ‘stable’. His team is in good shape and is being brought to Braeburn by a race official.

These are the official standings. That means they are official, not that they are correct. Things jump around a lot as people decide to update the standings. This problem is especially bad in the back of the pack, as no one bothers to update those standings when the lead is changing.

The Mushers in bold are former winners of the Yukon Quest, the numbers in parentheses are their Bib numbers, and the small “R” indicates a rookie.

Note: This post will be updated during the day, and the map changed on all posts to reflect the current situation.

All posts on the Yukon Quest can be seen by selecting “Yukon Quest” from the Category box on the right sidebar.

Seems like a rather small field of sleds this year. I guess it’s getting harder and harder to accumulate the funds to run.

I’m seeing this a lot when working with the public. Some few people are doing amazingly well financially, but the group falling out of the middle class just keeps growing by multiples.

Minus 30 – I can’t even imagine. We had a wind chill (not even the temp) of -10 one night, and I wouldn’t even open a door to look outside. January and February are the two hardest months for me, but I try to not wish my life away and appreciate the day as best I can. But if I were an Alaskan, come spring, I’d be outta there.

This was the first chance I had today to sit down and catch up on the Quest. We’re preparing for about a foot of snow tomorrow here, so there were those last-minute things to do all day. It’s not Alaska, but it’s going to be a big deal for all of us. We almost always lose power with these.

I read your link on Aliy’s blog about the accident. I have to say I was rather impressed by all the people that helped out. There’s a special place for those handlers that wanted to cheer the dogs in and make them feel they had finished their job. Nice.

This race has been a tough one. Lots of bad luck on trail and miserable conditions in Canada.

It is really bad because we lost another dog, Bashful. It was one of Dave Dalton’s Seven Dwarves, and he raised them from puppies, so I’m not surprised he scratched – his heart was no longer in it.

What amazes me is that 4 of the 5 rookies are still racing.

Sorry about the Gulf powering this mess. I hope you get snow and not the freezing rain, if you are going get another blast of winter, because the freezing rain is the absolute pits. All you can do is hope for warm weather. This storm is so large, if the power goes out there won’t be a lot of spare crews available to restore it.

Oh my, poor Bashful…does anyone know what happened to him? It’s heartbreaking, and they’ve done such a good job of protecting the dogs in recent history. I hope the Rainbow Bridge is intact when I get there. I have a lot of old friends to see.

It really does look like it’s going to be mostly snow which is, as you say, a very good thing. In deep snow (looks like we could get upwards of 14 inches now reporting), it’s not that hard to get around in a four wheel drive. When we get ice, I can’t get out. The hill outside my property is too steep. We’ve had several people go down that road in the past, go right through the stop sign, cross the intersecting road and end up in the field. Sitting nicely upright though.

They have to wait for further tests to find out. Usually it is related to eating – inhaling food while eating and getting pneumonia as a result, is the most common. If it is a hidden problem, Dave is going to have some tough decisions because his kennel is genetically close. The team was vet checked at Dawson, and Dave dropped a dog because he didn’t think it was carrying enough fat to be protected from the cold, so he was paying attention.

I used to hate the first snow of the winter when I was in law enforcement, because it would start with freezing rain and then snow, so I would be taking accident reports for the entire shift, and you couldn’t get a wrecker to clear the road, so the plows could work.

"A person who has a cat by the tail knows a whole lot more about cats than someone who has just read about them."

Mark Twain

"There are two novels that can change a bookish 14-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."

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